When parts are machined and manufactured, such as parts for use in the automotive industry, they are often covered with dirt, grease, and other contaminants. Therefore, the individual parts need to be washed in order to remove the grease, dirt, and other contaminants before they are shipped to a customer. Traditionally, the parts are placed in immersion washer units and immersed in a tank containing a solvent or cleaning agent of some kind which acted to chemically break up any dirt or contaminants on the parts for more effective cleaning. However, the solvents and cleaning agents traditionally used are usually environmentally hazardous. Given the recent concern over the environment, some of the solvents used in the past have been banned from use. Further, additional solvents will probably be banned or restricted in the future. Therefore, it is necessary now to utilize a cleaning system using biodegradable and less hazardous detergents such as water-based detergents in order to clean the parts using an industrial immersion washer unit. However, such environmentally safe cleaning agents are usually less effective in chemically removing and breaking up dirt and contaminants from the individual parts, and therefore, are less effective in cleaning those parts. As a result, the available immersion washer units are inadequate for use with the safer, biodegradable detergents.
Furthermore, the traditional environmentally hazardous solvents tended to quickly evaporate so that it was relatively easy to completely dry and remove any cleaning solvent from the surface of the cleaned parts. However, the environmentally safe detergents which are replacing various traditional hazardous solvents do not evaporate as easily, and it is, therefore, more difficult to fully dry the surface of the clean parts. This is particularly a problem when the parts contain complex internal passages or cavities which tend to trap the cleaning and rinsing fluids and also when the parts are such that they cannot tolerate water spotting from a water-based detergent.
Currently available immersion washer units also suffer from the fact that each container of parts must be manually loaded and unloaded because all washing, rinsing, and drying is performed on one basket at a time. Therefore, each basket is loaded individually, completes the wash cycle and is removed by the operator, requiring constant attention by a worker.
It is therefore an objective of the present invention to present an improved automated agitating immersion washer unit which operates effectively with environmentally safe, biodegradable and water-based detergents to provide sufficient cleaning and drying of machine parts. It is a further objective to present an improved washer unit which adequately dries the parts to prevent spotting and sufficiently removes the cleaning and rinsing fluids from cavities in the parts. It is a still further objective to present an improved washer unit which more effectively washes and dries several baskets simultaneously.